salt flats

When I lived in Salt Lake City, sometimes after work I would take my car west on I-80 toward the salt flats. I-80 changes from semi-urban Salt Lake City to wide open nothing pretty fast, and ten minutes from the freeway entrance there is only space, divided every so often by Wendover billboards that read, The Streamline of fun is minutes away! The bright Gotham City lights of the nuclear storage facility in Tooele fire up once the sky starts to dim. After Tooele, the road keeps moving alongside Great Salt Lake, not far from the shore. The water levels vary, and sometimes the water is high enough that it swamps the telephone poles on the side of the road, but usually several feet below the shoulder. After the lake are the salt flats—quiet white plains of salt that stretch nearly to the Nevada border. Despite being from Utah I never really thought about them until the last few years I was there, yet I think that I-80 drive is the landscape that cuts me up worst of all when I think about my home state, which I spent pretty much the whole month of October doing. Some of the worst times out of my life out there, but still, if the sun is in the sky, the salt flats light up. It’s similar visually to when the sun shines on feet of snow, except the salt doesn’t melt but just continues to heat up and glimmer all day. If the moon is up, the ground glows. If you head back between the two, when the sun’s heading down but its top layer is still visible, you can fly back over Great Salt Lake, part of the orange-pink light in the sky.